How to Search Gmail by Sender

Looking for emails from a particular sender, or all conversations with them? Find out here how to search Gmail by sender, name and email address.

First, Let’s Bang-Path Your Email Address

Yes, take your email address, exchange the ‘@’ for an ‘!’, delete everything from the back up to and including the first ‘.’ you encounter (presumably “.com”), place everything before the ‘!’ after it and everything that came behind it in front.

These email addresses were common in the early 1980s—when UUCP networking was common. Now, of course, you can barely send an email to such an address, let alone find emails from them in Gmail… which is very much unlike searching for messages from senders who use an ‘@’ email address.

Find by Name or Email Address

Type from: immediately followed by the sender’s name or email address.

Examples: To search Gmail by sender for messages from “ladedu@ladedu.com”, type from:ladedu@ladedu.com; to search for messages from “Heinz Tschabitscher”, type from:Heinz Tschabitscher.

Tips: You can enclose the sender’s name in quotation marks to make sure the match is exact; e.g. from:"Heinz Tschabitscher". You need not type the full email address (or name); you can search for all emails from the domain “ladedu.com,” for instance, or all messages from senders called “Heinz.”

Press Enter.

Search Gmail by Sender Starting with an Email from Them

To search Gmail by sender beginning with an example email:

Open a message from the sender.

Click the More button () in the conversation’s toolbar.

Select Filter messages like this.

Click Search in the pre-filled Gmail search field.

Note: If the message was sent through a mailing list, Gmail may use the list’s address instead of the sender’s. If this does not produce the desired result, do search using the address manually.

Find All Emails Received from and Sent to a Contact

To find all emails exchanged with a sender (that is both emails you received from them and messages you sent to them) in Gmail:

Click in the Search mail field in Gmail.

Type from: immediately followed by the sender’s name or email address.

Type OR to: also followed by the sender’s name or address immediately.

Example: To find all emails exchanged with ladedu@ladedu.com, type from:ladedu@ladedu.com OR to:ladedu@ladedu.com.

Tip: To make sure only emails you sent to the address (and not messages sent to the address with you in the Cc: field, for example), use from:<sender> OR (to:<sender> AND from:me), replacing “<sender>” with the sender’s email address.

Hit Enter.

How to Search Gmail by Sender Using a the Gmail App

To find all messages sent by somebody in the Gmail app for iOS or Android: